The Department of Health and Human Services has awarded a $1.12 million contract to government consulting firm LMI to identify and test practical methods for improving the security of personal health information.

LMI will perform work for HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). It is tasked with establishing a laboratory for health information technology automated security endpoint testing.

[See also: Kroll names top 10 data security issues for 2011.]

The pilot will test the efficacy of field-tested, proven methods for automating information security in clinical healthcare settings. LMI will develop a scalable health IT ecosystem that realistically models the chain of health IT events and considers multiple factors, including user venues, deployment size and variations in deployed hardware, according to HHS.

In the initial phase of the task, LMI will develop proof-of-concept pilot tests, with electronic health records and related hardware and software of particular interest for these initial efforts. LMI will identify EHR solutions to be considered for inclusion in the pilot tests and will validate a number of technologies.

[See also: Privacy hindering EHR progress, say researchers.]

The project is being funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and covers the first 13 months of what is anticipated to be a two-year initiative.